I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to image processing and compression. More specifically, the invention relates lossless encoding of video image and audio information in the frequency domain.
II. Description of the Related Art
Digital picture processing has a prominent position in the general discipline of digital signal processing. The importance of human visual perception has encouraged tremendous interest and advances in the art and science of digital picture processing. In the field of transmission and reception of video signals, such as those used for projecting films or movies, various improvements are being made to image compression techniques. Many of the current and proposed video systems make use of digital encoding techniques. Aspects of this field include image coding, image restoration, and image feature selection. Image coding represents the attempts to transmit pictures of digital communication channels in an efficient manner, making use of as few bits as possible to minimize the band width required, while at the same time, maintaining distortions within certain limits. Image restoration represents efforts to recover the true image of the object. The coded image being transmitted over a communication channel may have been distorted by various factors. Source of degradation may have arisen originally in creating the image from the object. Feature selection refers to the selection of certain attributes of the picture. Such attributes may be required in the recognition, classification, and decision in a wider context.
Digital encoding of video, such as that in digital cinema, is an area that benefits from improved image compression techniques. Digital image compression may be generally classified into two categories: loss-less and lossy methods. A loss-less image is recovered without any loss of information. A lossy method involves an irrecoverable loss of some information, depending upon the compression ratio, the quality of the compression algorithm, and the implementation of the algorithm. Generally, lossy compression approaches are considered to obtain the compression ratios desired for a cost-effective digital cinema approach. To achieve digital cinema quality levels, the compression approach should provide a visually loss-less level of performance. As such, although there is a mathematical loss of information as a result of the compression process, the image distortion caused by this loss should be imperceptible to a viewer under normal viewing conditions.
Existing digital image compression technologies have been developed for other applications, namely for television systems. Such technologies have made design compromises appropriate for the intended application, but do not meet the quality requirements needed for cinema presentation.
Digital cinema compression technology should provide the visual quality that a moviegoer has previously experienced. Ideally, the visual quality of digital cinema should attempt to exceed that of a high-quality release print film. At the same time, the compression technique should have high coding efficiency to be practical. As defined herein, coding efficiency refers to the bit rate needed for the compressed image quality to meet a certain qualitative level. Moreover, the system and coding technique should have built-in flexibility to accommodate different formats and should be cost effective; that is, a small-sized and efficient decoder or encoder process.
Many compression techniques available offer significant levels of compression, but result in a degradation of the quality of the video signal. Typically, techniques for transferring compressed information require the compressed information to be transferred at a constant bit rate.
One compression technique capable of offering significant levels of compression while preserving the desired level of quality for video signals utilizes adaptively sized blocks and sub-blocks of encoded Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficient data. This technique will hereinafter be referred to as the Adaptive Block Size Discrete Cosine Transform (ABSDCT) method. This technique is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,021,891, entitled “Adaptive Block Size Image Compression Method And System,” assigned to the assignee of the present invention and incorporated herein by reference. DCT techniques are also disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,107,345, entitled “Adaptive Block Size Image Compression Method And System,” assigned to the assignee of the present invention and incorporated herein by reference. Further, the use of the ABSDCT technique in combination with a Differential Quadtree Transform technique is discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,452,104, entitled “Adaptive Block Size Image Compression Method And System,” also assigned to the assignee of the present invention and incorporated herein by reference. The systems disclosed in these patents utilize what is referred to as “intra-frame” encoding, where each frame of image data is encoded without regard to the content of any other frame. Using the ABSDCT technique, the achievable data rate may be reduced from around 1.5 billion bits per second to approximately 50 million bits per second without discernible degradation of the image quality.
The ABSDCT technique may be used to compress either a black and white or a color image or signal representing the image. The color input signal may be in a YIQ format, with Y being the luminance, or brightness, sample, and I and Q being the chrominance, or color, samples for each 4:4:4 or alternate format. Other known formats such as the YUV, YCbCr or RGB formats may also be used. Because of the low spatial sensitivity of the eye to color, most research has shown that a sub-sample of the color components by a factor of four in the horizontal and vertical directions is reasonable. Accordingly, a video signal may be represented by four luminance samples and two chrominance samples.
Using ABSDCT, a video signal will generally be segmented into blocks of pixels for processing. For each block, the luminance and chrominance components are passed to a block size assignment element, or a block interleaver. For example, a 16×16 (pixel) block may be presented to the block interleaver, which orders or organizes the image samples within each 16×16 block to produce blocks and composite sub-blocks of data for discrete cosine transform (DCT) analysis. The DCT operator is one method of converting a time and spatial sampled signal to a frequency representation of the same signal. By converting to a frequency representation, the DCT techniques have been shown to allow for very high levels of compression, as quantizers can be designed to take advantage of the frequency distribution characteristics of an image. In a preferred embodiment, one 16×16 DCT is applied to a first ordering, four 8×8 DCTs are applied to a second ordering, 16 4×4 DCTs are applied to a third ordering, and 64 2×2 DCTs are applied to a fourth ordering.
The DCT operation reduces the spatial redundancy inherent in the video source. After the DCT is performed, most of the video signal energy tends to be concentrated in a few DCT coefficients. An additional transform, the Differential Quad-Tree Transform (DQT), may be used to reduce the redundancy among the DCT coefficients.
For the 16×16 block and each sub-block, the DCT coefficient values and the DQT value (if the DQT is used) are analyzed to determine the number of bits required to encode the block or sub-block. Then, the block or the combination of sub-blocks that requires the least number of bits to encode is chosen to represent the image segment. For example, two 8×8 sub-blocks, six 4×4 sub-blocks, and eight 2×2 sub-blocks may be chosen to represent the image segment.
The chosen block or combination of sub-blocks is then properly arranged in order into a 16×16 block. The DCT/DQT coefficient values may then undergo frequency weighting, quantization, and coding (such as variable length coding) in preparation for transmission. Although the ABSDCT technique described above performs remarkably well, it is computationally intensive.
Further, although use of the ABSDCT is visually lossless, it is sometimes desirable to recover data in the exact manner in which it was encoded. For example, mastering and archival purposes require to compress data in such a way as to be able to recover it exactly in its native domain.
Traditionally, a lossless compression system for images consists of a predictor, which estimates the value of the current pixel to be encoded. A residual pixel is obtained as the difference between the actual and the predicted pixel. The residual pixel is then entropy encoded and stored or transmitted. Since the prediction removes pixel correlation, the residual pixels have a reduced dynamic range with a characteristic two-sided exponential (Laplacian) distribution. Hence the compression. The amount of compression of the residuals depends on both the prediction and subsequent entropy encoding methods. Most commonly used prediction methods are differential pulse code modulation (DPCM) and its variants such as the adaptive DPCM (ADPCM).
A problem with pel-based prediction is that the residuals still have a high energy. It is due to the fact that only a small number of neighboring pixels are used in the prediction process. Therefore there is room to improve the coding efficiency of pel-based prediction schemes.